Well that is 3 hours of my life I won’t get back…. but the food was good.

Hobbled in the door and met up with a couple of girlfriends, H and K, laughing and giggling and ribbing me with ‘hop along’ yada yada. Found my old case manager and had a few laughs with her and then we were all seated.

Let the whinging begin.

Freaking hell. No wonder no one wants to hear about carers, their all a pack of sad sacks. For an hour and a half all we heard was ‘Poor me’, ‘My life is worse than yours’, ‘Oh, if you think THAT is bad…..’, ‘I want, want WANT’ Gimme-fucking-gimme.

If these people just stopped complaining and took a breath, maybe they could get some help.

Yes, our lives are hard. Yes, we didn’t choose to live this way. Yes, it is not freakin’ fair. But if you just concentrate on the negatives then yes, your life sucks.

Halfway through the chicks speech (and they held off the food till we heard about how horrible our lives were as to lose our appetite) there is an announcement. ‘If you parked inside the yellow line out the back you need to move your car now, or you will get a $66 fine’.

Guess where I parked?

So I hobbled out there, drove around for a few minutes to park somewhere else, MILES away from the venue and practically crawled back in there. To find a guy sitting in the seat next to me that I had my foot up on.

You know when you see a familiar face and you smile and say hello and then in that milli second you realise WHY you know that face? And that person is probably the last person you would ever want to spend time with? Yeah. That was him. I saw him when I initially hobbled in. Now my dinner buddy.

The woman droned on, the whingers droned on. I turned to H and said ‘Do you reckon we get razor blades to go with our meal, cause I could do with one right now’

*gaffaw*

Dark look from the speaker

Speaker says ‘So after all that, how do you feel?’

H turns to me ‘Sucicidal?’

*gaffaw*

Speaker finally finishes up and the food is served. Asshat next to me gets the chicken, I get the beef. ‘Would you mind swapping? I don’t eat red meat.’ I sweetly request. ‘No’ he spits and then goes on to bend my ear about how horrible his life is with his child and how much his school sucks and how he keeps writing formal complaints to the Education Dept and the school hate him. Shit, I hate him too and I barely know him!

I escape to the loo. I make a coffee and try and walk back with it. An INSTANT coffee with full fat milk! I am that desperate. I turn my freaking back on him to TRY and have a less depressing conversation for a change.

He starts whispering in my ear.

I am not going to escape. I give in and try and help him. Every suggestion gets a condescending look and brushed off. I am going to strangle this fucking man and then who is going to pick Boo up from school while I am languishing in jail? But I have heard they have cable TV….. hmmmm.

Then the rest of the table gets in on the act. They hate their school, they hate their teachers, they hate hate hate.

Swap schools I suggest. No, to inconvenient. Speak to the teacher. No cause when the TELL them to do things they don’t do it RIGHT. OR they don’t even know the teachers freaking NAME!!!

Do the teachers do anything you like? Yeah. Do you tell them, thank them? No! That is their job!

I stare into my sticky date pudding. Word is out that there is a chick that will listen to your whinging and they engulf me like zombies looking for brains.

‘Help me. Do this. Fix this. Your life couldn’t possibly be as bad as mine….’

I am drowning in a sea of negativity.

H looks at me and makes a cutting motion on her wrist. I fall about in giggles.

One particularly pathetic specimen looks at me in disgust. ‘Why are you so happy?’

I look her directly in the eye and say ‘Cause I don’t choose to dwell on the negative. My life is not defined by my sons disability nor my caring role. I choose to see my son as my child and not a child with Autism. And I try to see the funny side in every situation.’

These people just don’t get it. Be a horrible demanding piece of negative shit and no one will want to help you. A little bit of praise goes a long way.

Now I am totally shattered. I need a bottle of red and a straw. I need a shower to wash off the negativity and anger.

I need to get some good tunes going in the car while I pick up my Boo. That kid can smell despair from a mile away.

As I was walking to my car to leave a woman stopped me, the I-hate-my-kids-teacher-but-I-don’t-know-her-name drop kick.

‘Are you going on the Shopping Tour on the weekend?’

‘No’

‘Why not? It’s a fundraiser!’ for her kids school, the one I wanted Boo to go to but he can’t.

‘Poverty’ I call over my shoulder as I limp to my car

She turns to her friend. ‘Yeah, sure. I have seen the shoes she wears…. she aint poor’

You, my friend, are GREAT! I so wish you lived near me 🙂
This made me remember my last update email. I wrote the basics then personalised it for everyone I cared about – you being one of them 😉
I couldn’t help but contrast your response with that of another “friend” in a similar situation.

My line – “She’s growing well. A happy contented and very interactive little girl. Yay!!! Gooing, gahing, smiling and pushing up on her little arms during tummy time..”

Her response – “GREAT, GIRLS LESS LIKELY TO HAVE AUTISM BUT KEEP EYE OUT. U ARE BRAVER THAN ME. AUTISM LIFE LONG CONDITION EVEN FOR ASPBERGERS SO i GUESS ONE DAY BUBBY GIRL WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR BOYS AFTER SIBLINGS AND
U GUYS HAVE PASSED ON.BETTER BUILD HER RESILLIEANCE AS SOON AS PRACTICAL. …. PERSONALLY I FEEL SO SORRY FOR MY GIRLS THAT i HAVE CONDEMNED THEM TO A LIFETIME OF CARING FOR DISABLED SIBLING.BETTER OFF IF HE HAD LEAUKAEMIA AND DIED, AT LEAST A LIGHT AT END OF TUNNEL.”

Your response – “LOL, I can read the code in there 🙂 Wonderful to hear! ”

Kelley, I love you. You make me smile. You inspire me. Whenever I get the “woe-is-me”s I think of you and put on the positive spin. Lots of the time it works.
If I want to focus on the negative there is so much to focus on but it is just not healthy or good or worthwhile. So much better to have hope and see the positive and funny.

I don’t go to Carer’s functions. Partly for this very reason. And also because, quite honestly, they can be bloody depressing. I’ve been to a grand total of TWO over the years (despite constant invitations to this or that Carer’s Day Out or Mystery Tour or Workshop or….). At the first I was the youngest by at LEAST THIRTY YEARS. Apparently the vast majority of Carers in our area are caring for a spouse. Hmmm. Oh well, at least the Monte Carlos and International Roast was a distraction. At the second, I thought I was gonna hit the ‘we’re all in the same boat’ jackpot because I chose to attend a houseboat cruise (fully paid for) with a Young Carers Group. I signed up and was looking forward to cruising the Murray despite my morbid fear of putting myself in situations where I don’t know anyone else.

Pausing here to relate a funny story because it totally goes hand in hand with my morbid fear thing. They gave a location to meet, on a Saturday morning – the Carer’s Association office or some such thing. Well I turn up and walk into the most signposted/obvious building. That’s funny, lights are off. I walk up some stairs (there was a sign saying ‘office’ pointing up to second floor). On the way, I TRIP THE FREAKIN’ ALARM. Turns out that the MAIN office is in the main building (closed, since it was the weekend, and supposed to be locked by the person who was there last on the Friday afternoon but OPEN ALL NIGHT with full access to computer equipment not to mention, I found out later, the takings from two fundraising events worth THOUSANDS) but the meeting point was in a building behind the main one and around fourteen corners.

So I PELTED out of the main building fully convinced the cops were going to turn up at any second and how on earth was I going to explain that a cop’s wife was breaking-and-entering? I’m standing out on the footpath sweating and pretending I was invisible as hundreds of cars zoomed past (totally on a main road…of course). Then another door opens in the adjacent building and about two dozen people spill out. I should point out at this stage that the noise was EAR SPLITTING. The whole ‘whoooooooop….whooooooop’ thing. I explain who I am and what I did. Follow them into the smaller building. The two organizers, J and L, are freaking out because a) being junior staff members they did not have the code to turn the alarm off and b) nobody could hear a thing because the actual alarm system was, conveniently, directly above the meeting room where everyone was sitting.

About four phone calls and a full thirty minutes later, the alarm was shut off manually through the monitoring company in Sydney for goodness’ sake. We spent the next half hour late but sipping coffee because everyone’s nerves were a bit frayed. This is how I was introduced to my caring peers. Auuugh.

An hour and a half later, we’re all sitting on the houseboat, just getting to know each other. It was an okay meal (fully catered, which was lovely) but I found out halfway through that I was the ONLY person there, at age 26, whose caring capacity was that of parent, not of daughter/son or granddaughter/grandson. So just about the only common ground I expected to have with these folks was obliterated instantly.

It was an okay day, but that was 2yrs ago and I haven’t been back since. I just don’t have the time to join carers groups in my own age/disability bracket, and I don’t really have the urge to join anyway.

I’ve had my fair share of self-indulgent behaviour from other carers though. But I think the worst culprits are those non-carer mums who you’re never genuinely sure want to hear about your disabled son/struggles you might be having, despite being the people to bring it up, but you go along with it and make small talk anyway and all the while they’re nodding their heads and saying ‘uh huh’ but composing their grocery list in their heads – and you can tell because their eyes have glazed over. Makes it hard to be friends really with people outside of our little corner of the world, which is sad.

Oh Angel I cant believe anyone was tactless and horrible enough to say that to you about your daughter (who i havent seen but sounds soo gorgeous). My DD has taught herself to boss and care for DS in a lot of ways, but this isnt something I expect of her (and i tend to hear myself explaining “i am the mother, you are the child” on quite a few occasions too). There is no way I will be expecting her to look after DS when she is older, I am doing everything in my power to make sure DS is capable of looking after himself and for the bits he is, I will be arming him with the knowledge of where he needs to go to get that help. His sister was NOT born just to be his carer.

Kelley I sorry that others are just so insensitive too, lol imagine wasting a nice meal and a chance to be out just to whinge, and whats with not knowing your childs teachers name, lol stupid bint obviously.

Sounds hideous, Kelley, and I guess the sad part is it’s probably no more fun for the people who are drowning in their own negativity. Guess you just got to hope they’ll have an epiphany sometime, for their own sake as much as anyone else’s. Sometimes (as someone who can be too focussed on negatives at times) it really is inspirational and motivating just to be around people who are positive and optimistic.

Angel, not sure what to say in response to your friend’s comment, seems like a really sad perspective. Good to hear that you are focussing on the positives. 🙂

The other mom’s comment about your shoes irritates me. For all she knew, you were trying to give a polite or humorous reason for not wanting to go to a fundraiser for *her* kid’s school. Geez. You sound like a fun person to know — even if you didn’t have cool shoes. ;^)

Aww honey. I have no tolerance for people like that. In fact I have been known on occasion to say to people “well if you aren’t willing to change anything, how do you expect it to get better?”

And one thing someone always says (and I hate, but it’s true) is that no one *makes* you feel anything. You *choose* to feel defeated, you *choose* to feel downtroddon, instead of *choosing* to feel challenged and doing something to make a difference.

I said in a comment on my blog this week that if you don’t vote (in my opinion anyway) you lose the right to complain – it works here too, if YOU aren’t wiling to change anything, YOU lose the right to complain.

WELL DONE TO ALL THE CARER MUMS HERE!! Freakin hell! If you don’t develop a sense of humour about what life dishes you out, you just end up drowning in a sea of toilet paper. You HAVE to laugh. I really gotta wonder about people who don’t develop the ability to laugh when others think they should be crying.